


my soul, it came home

by Ariasune



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Character Study, Gen, sibling feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 16:39:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1864953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariasune/pseuds/Ariasune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malik becomes known as Isis' attractive, slightly mysterious, motorbike riding, enthusiastic, if rude and certainly brilliant little brother. Naturally, half the staff has a crush on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my soul, it came home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Magpied_Spider](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magpied_Spider/gifts).



> Lyrics come from Ends in the Ocean / Oh Life by Avalanche City and I suggest [listening](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNc8SzWvoMg) to it at least once whilst you read :)

Oh my heart had resigned

To forfeit the rest of my life

But my soul had a plan to walk hand in hand

So back it came for me

* * *

"Your blond assistant - he's your brother, yes?"

Isis folded her hands in her lap, looking at the director cooly. She is calm as a sea - churning inside, pacific calm across her features - _what has he done now_ , she asks herself, but aloud, "This is about Malik?"

"Yes," A groan that sets Isis’ heart storming and fills her stomach with flickering insects, "He's been interrupting presentations, tours, lectures-"

Isis isn't sure what she can do for that; Malik is bossy without meaning to be. He's also inclined to give an answer to questions nobody asks. He is the sort of person who will answer a rhetorical question whether or not it burns a bridge with it. He is - in a word - difficult, and Isis is not sure he will understand but, "I'll speak with-"

"We'd like to give him an office," And that sets her back on her metaphorical heels.

* * *

Malik is lazy, and lounges about their house like some decorative, domesticated cat. Isis and Rishid have no complaints to this, after-all, they have income enough, and Malik has every right to be exhausted. There is the cultural shock, still stinging in their throats like salt water, and then there is the recovery. It fills up his time like water overflowing a cup; group was a natural disaster, and after one attempt was quickly discarded. Instead, he has been through four therapists; chewed them up, and spat them out. They have little hope with him, and it's not as though he is trying to be difficult, it just ends up that way.

He seems to like the fifth one well-enough, at least. And they don't begrudge him for his laziness, after-all, he's woken up thrashing, sobbed over a cup of coffee, smashed a mug and then stared down at his hands like he has never seen them before, all in a single night. 

Still a year on, Malik doesn't break the dishes, but instead worries in ways they cannot reassure him of. Some dreaded fear that what he has done to their family, or perhaps others, is worthy of rejection. And it would be. On an intellectual level, he laughs it off, but he hugs a little too tight, with eyes a little too round. They cannot seem to pull the fear out of him - _I would_ , he says, _have to be abnormally self-assured to not wonder_ \- and it sticks in his throat.

They do try, Isis cups his hands in her own, "After the hell we have witnessed, why would we throw you away, when you have finally, finally," The word chokes her and they wrap together in a hug, always a bit too tight, but not near tight enough, "Finally returned to us?"

"I love you," Rishid reminds him across the couch, "Nothing else really matters."

Nevertheless, Malik worries compulsively, like a fretting parent (or so they assume, they have little experience in such clichés, too much with others).

Isis decides to give him a job; something to occupy him, and something that lets him know he is contributing, he is useful, he is wanted. He ends up as her assistant, but she's mostly overseas, so his job consists of drinking coffee, and sometimes sorting her already alphabetized desk. It's scarcely a job at all, but it seems to calm him, if only a little.

"I love you," Malik tells her when she returns from France, and buries his head in the crook of her neck.

* * *

The complaints take awhile to start - Malik is unsure of himself, wary of the museum and its staff - but when he grows accustomed to it, and builds his own messy nest of papers in the corner of Isis’ office, they begin. 

There was the problem of the motorbike Malik had propped outside the museum. _Unseemly_ , someone had commented, _kawasaki knock-off_ had been the other. Malik had slaved over the beastling of a bike in the dark room beneath their house, which had become unquestionably, the Garage. Capital G.

There was also Malik's habit of correcting people, really it was mostly this, since Malik had no issue with interrupting conversations, derailing tour guides, and speaking out in presentations he had only passed briefly in the hall. _Unseemly_ , seemed to be the word of choice with her brother, but also _upstart_ , and once she had overheard the Head of Archives calling him a _damnable brat_. One guide had quit, not exactly in protest, but it didn't need to be said.

Most offensive, was Malik's mess, which crawled after him like a primordial slime at his feet. How anyone could take such pride in their appearance, but be so destructive to every other appearance in the vicinity confused Isis. Rishid had laughed, voice low and knowing when she'd mentioned it, as though there was some wordplay lurking in the observation. 

Isis had expected Malik to be fired, not given his own space in the Museum, but they did indeed carve out a place for him. Insufferable he might be, but brilliant he was undoubtedly, and besides, this was academia. He was eccentric, nothing more than an interesting subversion to some cliché, and again brilliant.

* * *

_Dreamy_ , Isis’ actual assistant has decided, setting Isis’ papers before her, _But difficult_.

This was new to her, but then Malik was mysterious - his education, ability to speak japanese, and childhood as unspoken as Isis’ - and bright with people. He saw the world in some brighter palette than others did, experiencing it far closer to the bone than expected. People delighted him, of all kinds, and he was not well-mannered, but instead a burst of flavour in the social scene. A crunch of pomegranate seeds, some vivid purple sunset colour. Exotic blond hair (stood a mile out in the crowd) and he showed up in the entrance in leather pants, some sordid midriff and a motorbike helmet. It was practically expected he'd turn heads. Friendly, exotic, unknown, pretty even, and, well, he drove a _motorbike_.

Malik didn't seem any the wiser of blushing university students, merely answered their questions with that same feverish tone. Easy to mistake for arrogance, but a love of life that ran blood-deep and pulsed through his veins, sang through his nerves. _A star burning up twice brightly, twice quickly_ , Isis sometimes thought. 

He often retreated to his uncontrollably disorganised office or the Garage, working in the low light (he had thrown an archivist tarp over the window of his office, regretful smile in hand) and taking some comfort in the dark, "It's a shame," He always said, "That the dark is so comforting to me," But then he'd shrug, accepting it was the least of things he could have from his past.

Besides - hair whipping, bike snarling, blood racing - he was not some creature nocturnal or diurnal. He slept into the afternoon sometimes, sat up late into the day, woke at dawn and went to bed at sensible times. He was also not a creature of consistent schedule, or perhaps schedule at all.

* * *

They offered him a job as a tour guide as well, and he threw his hands up, laughed, "Oh no, I couldn't."

"You practically tour already," It was true, Malik had merely to overhear a question spoken by a visitor, and he would soon be followed by a small group, as he gestured wildly, walking them through the exhibits.

"Well maybe an audio tour," Malik conceded, and they had to remove a good fifth of the content. What Malik discerned as pertinent information was a rush, like an ocean slamming into a person, air throwing their hair back, too fast vehicles and too much. 

* * *

He procrastinated himself into a profession, not that he was anything but Isis’ assistant on the payroll. Nor did he publish, give presentations, lectures, but woe betide the person who caught him at the coffee pot. He'd talk you to death given half the chance. There were complaints that he seemed to know things that hadn't been dug up yet, and he joked, the only person laughing as he did so, "That I ought to have been born in a tomb myself!"

Nobody else seemed to find the joke funny, least of all Isis. Whenever she came from overseas, Malik would swing her up in a tight hug, nuzzling into her shoulder. No matter what he had promised that day, instead he would drag his sister to his motorbike, drive home, leap upon the couch and curl into Rishid's lap. Malik would say the word love like it was easy, whenever it crossed his mind or brushed his heart, he would say it. "Too much time not saying it," He once said, kissing Isis’ cheek, "Nothing else really matters," He stole the remote and changed to that wretched pimp your ride channel.

 _The Ishtar Three are close_ , the receptionists commented, _Don't talk much about their past though, probably something sordid_.

 _I've heard-_ and the wheels of the rumour mill span on.

Sometimes it even made Isis laugh.

* * *

Oh my heart was alone

But my soul - it came home

Now all I can see is life breaking free

So long captivity for me


End file.
